


Commander Dad

by stonelions



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Cute, Fluff, Illustrated, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-04
Updated: 2012-09-04
Packaged: 2017-11-13 12:50:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/503715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonelions/pseuds/stonelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard takes care of the domestic stuff for a day. Part of the post-destroy ending Vancouver Space Husbands headcanon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commander Dad

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spicyshimmy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/gifts).



> Drawings are stashed at the end. <3

“Keep your heads down, we’re taking heavy fire!” Ash crash landed on the comforter mid-shout.

One of her bony knees caught Shepard in the gut as she went clambering on all fours across him like she was elbowing her way through a warzone trench. In Shepard’s books, it still counted as a gentle awakening.

Shepard said “Oof!” when her knee jabbed him and he made a grab for her, but she was already hopping off the other side of the mattress, shrieking something about holding the line. Mako had started barking and David had started crying in his crib.

It was some kind of natural wonder how things with such small lungs managed to be so damn loud. Ash with her big booming holler that could shake the walls; David with his constant tears that had them worried at first that there was something wrong with him.

Shepard stood up, felt the usual series of pops, starting with his knee and following the framework of bone and metal at the core of him all the way along his spine to his neck. He groaned it out, and then walked over to the crib. “Hey kiddo,” he said to David.

David cried.

Shepard scooped him up against his chest and rocked him the way Kaidan did. It never worked for Shepard, but he tried anyway. “Pops isn’t here, so you’re stuck with Commander Dad,” he said softly to the baby. “Sorry, little guy. I know it just isn’t the same.”

Kaidan was teaching an advanced biotics seminar in Whistler all weekend. Garrus was coming by to take Ash for the afternoon, and Shepard and David were going to have to try and understand one another for two days straight.

It was going to be hell. But Shepard had died twice. He could handle it. Or if he couldn’t handle it, at least he was alive to have to live things down.

David was still crying. Thankfully it wasn’t the blaring, gut-wrenching wail that made Shepard wonder how old you had to be to have an existential crisis. It was just his “my loud sister woke me up and you’re not my papa” crying. That normally stopped after a few minutes of pacing.

So Shepard paced, and David cried. Ash came rushing back into the room with her shoes on and a pack slung over her shoulder. “I’m ready to ship out,” she said. “When’s uncle Garrus getting here?”

Shepard hefted David on his hip to free up a hand so he could rub sleep out of his eye. “Take it easy, recruit,” he said. Ash picked at a scab on her elbow. Her elbows were perpetual scabs. “Ash honey, don’t,” he said. He rubbed the top of her head to distract her. “And it’s not even zero eight hundred yet, so you’ve got a while to wait to ship out.”

“But I wanna go now,” she said. Her pigtails were uneven. She insisted on doing them herself most of the time. Kaidan fixed them usually, if she’d let him. Shepard liked brushing her hair, but he would give her the elastics when he was done so she could mess it up all over again. Sometimes ponytails, sometimes braids. Most days, uneven pigtails. Always cute. Shepard pushed her bangs back and then stopped staring lovingly at her before she got mad at him for it.

“Uncle Garrus would be pretty choked if you shipped out without him, so let’s all just... calm down and go eat some Blast-Os,” Shepard said. Ashley pouted, but darted out the door. David was still whimpering.

Shepard frowned and picked the henley Kaidan had worn to bed the night before last out of the laundry basket. “Here,” he said. He flopped it over his shoulder and used the corner of it to dab at David’s wet cheek. “Smells like Papa, right?” Shepard remembered the pacifier on the nightstand and offered it to David, whose little fist had curled in Kaidan’s shirt. He let Shepard give him the pacifier and stopped crying.

In the kitchen, everybody got their Blast-Os: Ash’s in her favorite blue bowl, Shepard’s in the first thing he grabbed out of the cupboard, and David’s dry, spread out on his highchair tray.

Shepard always had to stop Ash from “requisitioning” –her word– all her little brother’s marshmallow bits. He felt like a hypocrite about it because he ended up requisitioning a few himself.

Kaidan never actually allowed the Blast-Os out before noon. “This is dessert,” he always said, reading the nutrition label. He always read the nutrition label, those big dark eyebrows coming together in the middle of his forehead. As though he could lower the sugar content through the power of disbelief alone. Maybe it was some biotic thing. Kaidan’s powers had always been more refined. Shepard was all about the vanguard charge, the blast of raw force, worrying about where it took you after you got there.

It had only killed him twice. Sort of.

Ash’s raw energy from the Blast-Os took her out into the yard with the dog. Shepard took David into the tomato patch and got ready for him to eat dirt as soon as he turned away from him for more than three seconds. He ended up eating some grass instead, which had the illusion of being cleaner, so there was that.

“Your papa likes salads too, buddy, but this is ridiculous.” Of course, when Shepard picked him up, he started crying again.

David was down for a nap when Garrus arrived for Ash. She was bolting out the front door before Garrus was all the way through it.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go!”

“I guess I should go,” Garrus said, backing outside after her. Shepard laughed.

“Just don’t talk about calibrations. I’m not sure the big vidscreen can handle another round.”

“Aye aye, Commander Dad.” Garrus saluted. Shepard watched him take Ash by the hand and they walked away down the block toward the park.

Mako whined. “She’ll be back,” Shepard said. He reached down to stroke her ears. “She’ll be back.”

When Kaidan called, Shepard had just changed David and set him down in the living room with his favorite krogan plushie. It was Wrex, in fact. Shepard got an action figure, but Wrex got a whole toy line. Something about the irony of a cuddly krogan made the plushie a big seller.

“Hey,” Kaidan said. The face on the comm was his professional one: clean-shaven, hair perfect, the gray at his temples stark in contrast to the rest of his hair. There was more salt mixed in with the pepper than there had been a couple years ago, but it looked good on him. Not like the mangy gray that was creeping into Shepard’s beard. He just looked old.

“Hey,” Shepard said. “How’s it going?”

“Late lunch,” Kaidan said, explaining the timing of the phonecall. “How are you doing?”

“Well I’m—

David had heard Kaidan’s voice, and started crying behind Shepard. Shepard picked him up so he could see the vidscreen, and that stopped him fussing.

“We’re surviving,” Shepard said.

Kaidan smiled and waved to David. “Hey Vivi,” he said. “I miss you babs, I hope you’re being good.”

“Hey what about me?” Shepard asked.

“Yeah, I hope you’re being good too, Shepard,” Kaidan said. His lip was doing that little thing on the scarred side.

David and Kaidan cooed at one another for a while, and then Kaidan had to get back to his afternoon workshop. Shepard took a deep breath when he hung up, ready for the waterworks to start. They did, though it was more of a slow boil than an instant geyser, David working up to the wail with a few quiet whines first. Shepard went back upstairs for Kaidan’s shirt and the pacifier, David’s head tucked under his chin.

Garrus brought Ash home filthy, covered in grass stains and with smeared turian face paint that matched his -the stuff on his good side, anyway- on her face. She was grinning and exhausted.

Shepard left David with Garrus and herded Ash into the bathtub to scrub up. He was puzzled sometimes by how she managed to get so dirty. He even forgot that there were freckles under the layers of dust and grime and sap. But he often caught himself with dirt in the wrinkles of his knuckles, potting soil under his fingernails; Kaidan forever wiping smears of earth and tomato dust off his cheek. So he got it. He did get it.

They ate dinner together, Garrus’ meal stowed in the fridge clearly marked: something Kaidan had left behind prepared.

Garrus took one for the team and kept David in his lap for over an hour, holding him up so he could grab at his face. The baby actually laughed whenever Garrus shifted his mandibles under his tiny fingers.

“You’re okay, kid,” Garrus said to him, and David laughed more.

“Figures. Both of my children wish they were born Vakarians,” Shepard said.

“Who wouldn’t?” Garrus said. “I’m not sure why you always complain about this one,” he touched his flat turian nose to David’s snub baby one and David squealed with delight. “He seems perfectly happy.”

“Well, it’s just me he doesn’t really like all that much,” Shepard said.

“Not everybody in the galaxy is gonna like you, Shepard,” Garrus said. “Even if you did save us all from total annihilation. I thought you’d have that one figured out by now.”

“Yeah. It’s just too bad one of the ones who doesn’t turns out to be my own son.” Shepard shrugged. “But what can you do.”

“Dad,” Ash said, in that tone she got whenever she figured somebody was whining. “Don’t be a big, stupid jellyfish.”

Shepard glanced over at Garrus, who was barely keeping a laugh back, mandibles set tight against his face. David was pawing at him, reaching for his fringe.

“Time for bed,” Shepard said to Ash. “Go brush your teeth.”

“Ten more minutes!” Ash pleaded.

“I bet your dad can empty this dishwasher faster than you can get ready for bed,” Garrus said.

Ashley bolted upstairs.

“Hey, hey! Make sure you brush for two minutes,” Shepard called after her. He started to empty the dishwasher.

“It’s on a timer anyways,” she called back.

Right. Her and Kaidan had those fancy toothbrushes. Shepard stuck with the classic.

“She’s a good kid,” Garrus said. “But then again, she’s your kid, so I guess it’s only a matter of time.”

Shepard snorted.

Ash reappeared, breathless but in her pajamas and smelling minty, a few minutes later. Shepard had barely put away any dishes. She got her ten more minutes, but it was getting pretty late.

“Okay recruit, bed for real this time,” he said.

“I wanna say goodnight to Papa when he calls!”

Garrus whistled, or made a sound that was the turian equivalent thereof. “Tactical thinker,” he said.

Shepard picked Ashley up and tossed her over a shoulder. “You can call him from your private terminal, and then you are going to get very sleepy,” Shepard said as he carried her up the stairs. Kaidan would probably read her a story over the link.

Garrus handed David back to Shepard when he came downstairs.

“Well Shepard, good luck tomorrow. I’d tell you to give them hell, but I know they’ll only give it back. Runs in the family.”

“Don’t worry,” Shepard said. “Their grandmother is coming for the morning.” Mrs. Alenko would keep everybody shipshape. And there’d be no Blast-Os before noon. A lot of funny things seemed to run in families.

Garrus left, and David started to cry.

“Yeah,” Shepard said. “I hate it when he leaves too.” He kissed the side of David’s head. “Just don’t tell him that.”

Kaidan called again to sing David his favorite lullaby. Shepard kicked back on the bed and listened, like he usually did, metal joints aching along with the real ones.

It wasn’t something he’d ever thought his life would become. Cleaning up scrappy scabbed elbows and brushing hair and feeling like an idiot because he couldn’t get his baby to stop crying. Small problems. Tiny ones.

He turned onto his side, face in Kaidan’s pillow, sucking in a deep breath while he listened to his husband’s soft, husky voice singing an old song over the commlink.

Small problems. The hard knots of scar tissue in his back, the laundry that needed doing, the table leg that the dog had chewed. All these things were love, in a way. A kind of love. His love, and Kaidan’s. It wasn’t what he’d started off wanting, but life was one of those perspectives you couldn’t always control. At first he’d thought it was dying that had changed his point of view, flipped his priorities around, made what mattered crystalline.

He’d been wrong, though. It was living. Living did that.

 

 


End file.
